MEXICO CITY (AP) — The lower house of Mexico’s Congress passed contentious legislation Wednesday that would launch the most sweeping judicial overhaul of the century by requiring all judges to stand for election.
In a marathon session in which legislators were forced to meet in a gymnasium after protesters blocked the Congress building, the lower chamber approved the constitutional measure 359-135 in a party-line first vote just before the sun rose Wednesday morning. The measure, which requires a two-thirds majority, was passed in a second-round vote later that morning, and is now headed to the Senate, where it is expected to pass by a razor-thin margin.
Mexico’s ruling party says judges in the current court system are corrupt, and wants the country’s entire judicial branch – some 7,000 judges – to stand for election.
Critics say the constitutional changes would deal a severe blow to the independence of the judiciary, and they question how such massive elections could be carried out without having drug cartels and criminals field their own candidates.
Attention now turned to the Senate, where President Andrés Manuel López Obrador ‘s Morena party is one seat short of the two-thirds majority, but might be able to pick off an opposition senator. The Centro Pro human rights groups called on the Senate to kill the measure, saying it “affects the life of democracy, endangers human rights and violate Mexico’s international obligations.”
López Obrador said those who opposed it “have no moral standing, because everyone knows, the majority of Mexicans know, that corruption is rampant in the judiciary.”
The president has long railed against courts that blocked some of his building projects and policy measures because they ran afoul of constitutional and legal norms. López Obrador has vowed for months to rush through a raft of measures like the judicial overhaul – as well as a proposal to eliminate almost all independent oversight and regulatory agencies.
The vote is expected to be extremely tight in the Senate, though the president’s party looks poised to win over the single vote it lacks there. If passed by the Senate, the constitutional proposal would be sent to Mexico’s 32 state congresses where it must be approved by most of them. López Obrador’s party controls a majority of the states.
Critics say the measure will devastate Mexico’s system of checks and balances.
“We should inaugurate a wall of shame that says: ‘Today begins the fall of our Republic.’ And it should have the date and all the faces of the Morena congressmen,” Paulina Rubio Fernández, a congresswoman from the conservative opposition National Action Party, shouted before the vote.
Alejandro Moreno, the head of another opposition party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party, vowed Wednesday to have party members vote against the proposal in the Senate, as they did in the lower house.
The vote Wednesday was made possible by López Obrador’s Morena party and its allies winning overwhelming majorities in the June 2 elections. The all-night session came after protesters blocked the entrance to Mexico’s Congress on Tuesday in an attempt to demand debate on the judicial overhaul.
The overhaul has fueled a wave of protests by judges, court employees and students across Mexico in recent weeks, and reached another inflection point on Tuesday when protesters strung ropes across entrances to the lower house of Congress to block legislators from entering. That came as the country’s Supreme Court voted 8-3 to join strikes, adding more weight to the protests.
“The party with the majority could take control of the judicial branch, and that would practically be the end of democracy,” said protester Javier Reyes, a 37-year-old federal court worker. “They want to own Mexico.”
Under the current system, judges and court secretaries, who act as judges’ assistants, slowly qualify for higher positions based on their record. But under the proposed changes, any lawyer with minimal qualifications could run, with some candidacies decided by drawing names from a hat.
Mexico’s courts have long been plagued by corruption and opacity, but in the last 15 years they have been subject to reforms to make them more open and accountable, including changing many closed-door, paper-based trials for a more open, oral-argument format.
Voices both at home and abroad say the new changes could mark a setback in the effort to clean up courts.
U.S. Ambassador Ken Salazar said Tuesday that “there is a great deal of concern,” claiming the changes “could damage relations a lot, and it’s not just me saying that.” Salazar has pointed to the election of judges as his main qualm with the overhaul, noting that it would negatively affect investment and the Mexican economy.
López Obrador said last week he has put relations with the United States and Canadian embassies “on pause” after the two countries voiced concerns over the proposed judicial overhaul.
President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum, López Obrador’s close ally, on Tuesday night once again defended the reform, writing on the social media platform X that it “does not affect our commercial relations, nor national or foreign private investments. On the contrary, there will be more and better rule of law and more democracy for all.”
“If judges, magistrates, and ministers are elected by the people, where is the authoritarianism?” she added.
The proposed changes would cover thousands of judges at various levels and would introduce a time limit for judges to rule on many cases to combat a tendency for some trials to stretch out over decades. More controversially, the reforms would also introduce “hooded judges” to preside over organized crime cases; their identities would be kept secret in order to prevent reprisals.
And the courts would be largely stripped of their power to block government projects or laws based on appeals by citizens. It would also almost certainly assure that the president’s party continues with significant political power long after López Obrador leaves office at the end of this month.
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